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Comment by Bakary | Hacker News Reader

>Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist?

This is one aspect of the tech world (and more broadly the "comfortable knowledge worker" class) that irritates me. There are so many aspects of sustainable development that are only considered from a perspective of NIMBYism mixed with orientalism. The one that bothers me the most is the portrayal of overpopulation as something caused only by people in developing countries, as if the first world wasn't part of the total count.

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The one that bothers me the most is the portrayal of overpopulation as something caused only by people in developing countries, as if the first world wasn't part of the total count.

FWIW if you ignore immigration, nearly all first world countries are gradually depopulating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

Of course, that doesn't mean for a second that the solution to the world's problems somehow involves population control in developing countries.

In fact, birth rate decreases after a certain level of development. The first world went through the same process, the developing world today is going through that process much more rapidly.

So the solution is probably to help them develop ASAP.

> So the solution is probably to help them develop ASAP.

There are two kinds of mythologies that have been the cause of reckless and thoughtless procreation leading to overpopulation: 1. Religion 2. ‘Abundance’ mythologies penned by the Peter Diamandis/Steven Kotler ilk.

I have no idea who Peter Diamandis/Steven Kotler are but I doubt they had any large effects on the overpopulation of the world.

Regarding "religion": do you think "religions" came up with the concept of having a lot of children?

You don't think it's simply a natural instinct, like in all other animals? And that in a world where few make it to adulthood, people tried to have more children?

> And that in a world where few make it to adulthood, people tried to have more children?

It's pretty well-established that it isn't poverty per se but gender equality that predicts birth rates.

I'm not sure what your point is here. I simply mean that e.g. during the stone age most children died early, so you needed to have more of them.

Then I obviously misunderstood you, sorry for the confusion.

Genuinely interested, could you share some academic literature on the subject?

The newest I immediately remember is this: https://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol40/2/

Here is a blog post of the author in case the above is not readable for you: https://www.niussp.org/article/gender-equality-and-fertility...

This study is in the context of previous assumptions of a U-curved relationship: low equality == high birth rates, medium equality == low birth rates, high equality == high birth rates. That study shows that the last part doesn't seem to be true.

Thanks!

Poverty can probably actually lower birth rates by forcing women into the workforce. If a parent is at home, the marginal cost is a lot lower for another child than it is if people are paying for childcare.

Direct correlation of female workforce participation and poverty shows no trend: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/female-labor-force-partic...

The macro trend of poverty <> birth rates points in the opposite direction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

Data points on the very poor end are all over the place, though.

The high workforce participation -> low birth rate correlation is definitely visible over time: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fertility-and-female-labo...

> Of course, that doesn't mean for a second that the solution to the world's problems somehow involves population control in developing countries.

Why not? A lot of people on the left are saying that having children is bad for the environment, why shouldn't this be true in poor countries?

Because A doesn't automatically follow B.

Fewer children is better for the environment; that doesn't mean one has to favor population control. It's easier, more democratic and probably at least as effective to enforce equality for women in education and economics, and the lower birthrates follow automatically.

Population control doesn't have to mean forced mass sterilizations. If you educate people with at least the partial goal of them having fewer children, that is also population control.

Not that there's anything particularly democratic about "enforcing equality" in foreign countries.

How do you reverse it when it becomes a problem? If we’re taking the long view here, our future generations may be facing a world where there aren’t enough people. Or is that a problem that we’ll leave to them to figure out?

>our future generations may be facing a world where there aren’t enough people

That would be wonderful because it would mean that workers get fair wages. Lack of productivity can be compensated by automation.

>How do you reverse it when it becomes a problem?

That's biologically impossible. Even if you sterilize every human with a birth certificate on earth.

I’m not personally advocating for population control, just couldn’t understand why it would be completely off the table in poor countries.

I think the conversation is just scary for obvious reasons based on human historical tendencies. The topic is not exactly verbotten, but it is genuinely hard to argue for or against dispassionately. Part of the official reasoning is that young population is a poor's country resource. I personally take issue with nations seeing their population that way, but it is not unusual.

I honestly am not sure education is the answer. Both me and my wife are educated. There are arguments against us having children from genetic standpoint and she still wanted to roll the dice. It may work in aggregate, but natural pull is very strong.

Actually that wouldn't be a very efficient solution because pollution is not evenly divided across the world's population. See this map [1] showing CO2 emissions per capita, or this diagram [2] showing CO2 emissions per fertility.

As this article [3] (unfortunately not in English) aptly puts it: "Air travels represents around 5% of the emissions of humanity [4], but 90% of humans have never taken a plane." (the 90% figure is arguably difficult to assess [5]. It comes from an article in French behind a paywall, but other sources [6] show similar numbers).

Finally, CO2 is of course not the only source of pollution. But this map [7] showing meat supply per person shows a similar direction.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/CO2_emis...

[2] https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2014;&mar...

[3] https://medium.com/enquetes-ecosophiques/d%C3%A9mographie-et...

[4] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/30987495.pdf

[5] https://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-the-worlds-population-...

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/nov/17/people-caus...

[7] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Meat_sup...

Because your children will pollute and consume an order of magnitude more than poor children. If you're American, your children will pollute and consume twice as much as even Europeans, IIRC.

Of course, this is the average American, which is a deceptive number when talking about countries with high levels of wealth inequality.

Please don’t assume I’m American; anything but that.

I’m not an advocate for population control, but if I were I wouldn’t exclude poor countries from my scope. Many poor countries are “developing” and it seems more reasonable to ask people that were planning to have 8 children to instead have 4 rather than targeting people that were aiming for one or two. Especially when the 8 kid family to be is already poor.

The "twice as much as even Europeans" is even more deceptive as there's a difference of at least a factor of 2 between countries in Europe. For instance, Switzerland's consumption of carbon per capita is almost 3 times that of Bulgaria or Portugal, while Luxembourg is apparently over twice as high as the US (not sure why?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

Plus, the first world inhabitants pollute much, much more than third world individuals. Plane travel, consumerism, person/car ratio, etc etc

Oh “first” or “third”, this is actually the “only one” world we have. The more we want to be rich, the more we destroy it. ...how many want to be rich?

What is rich actually? I still don't understand how can an entire nation be rich without someone (immigrant) or machines doing your job.. or access to latest gadgets? but i still see people struggling to pay for education, finding jobs is extremely difficult etc.. people are still low/middle/upper irrespective of the country. there are several developing nations where people don't have so much struggle to live.

> Plane travel, consumerism, person/car ratio, etc etc

The rest of the world is catching up faster than most people are aware.

Here's a link for daily plastic waste generation per person: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita

I don't see an obvious correlation between first world and amount of waste: the #1 country is Guyana, China and Russia are well above Canada, etc.

Similar with CO2 emissions: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe... The #1 is Qatar, we in Montenegro are on the second place.

Yes, there isn't a clear divide between "first-world" and everyone else anymore. That being said, I think the wealthier countries that are more industrialized have a debt to pay with regards to climate impact given that they were able to develop and build before mainstream awareness of the issue, and virtually all of the accumulated pollution today is therefore due to these industrialized nations.

I'd like to see a period in which China, India, and smaller nations are able to use more than their share of the global quota while the wealthier countries in western Europe and North America use less, per capita and in sum.

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